Quantum-thluhu

Because the universe has a peculiar sense of humor sometimes, my comment to a friend yesterday that it'd been a good long while since I'd run into a purely insane claim was followed up nearly instantaneously by a different friend sending me a link to an article called "The Dimensionality of Cthulhu."

Yes, Cthulhu, as in the octopoid monster-god in the mythos of H. P. Lovecraft.  The link led to a blog entitled "Lovecraftian Science: Scientific Investigations Into the Cthulhu Mythos."  When saw the title, I thought at first that this was just an example of a scientist having a little bit of fun, rather in the same vein as the hysterically funny fake scientific papers in The Journal of Irreproducible Results, or the way legitimate historians will play around with (and argue over) analysis of the timeline and backstory of The Lord of the Rings.  But upon reading the entire entry, and several other posts besides, at the cost of countless brain cells in my prefrontal cortex which cried out piteously as they dissolved into the amorphous, bubbling nether-slime of the darkest eldritch reaches of time and space, I have come to the conclusion that this dude is actually serious.

[Image is courtesy of the artist, Dominique Signoret, and is licensed under the Creative Commons BenduKiwi, Cthulhu and R'lyeh, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Consider, for example, the following passage:

Based on... references made by HPL, Cthulhu and its spawn are not from our space-time continuum.  This explains how these entities can function beyond the confines of our physical laws, such as its fluid movement and apparent plasma-like structure.  Indeed, further study of Cthulhu and its spawn may provide the evidence needed to support the M-theory.

Yes, M-theory, that impossibly abstruse mathematical construct that attempts to unify all consistent string theoretical models of quantum gravity.  The introduction to the Wikipedia article on the topic, which despite my bachelor's degree in physics represents the limit of my understanding of the subject, says the following:

Investigations of the mathematical structure of M-theory have spawned a number of important theoretical results in physics and mathematics.  More speculatively, M-theory may provide a framework for developing a unified theory of all of the fundamental forces of nature.

"Spawned."  Sounds like a Cthulhu reference already.  So there you are, then.  Seems like q.e.d. to me.

The author of the article apparently agrees.  He goes on to say:

M-theory describes a reality of vibrating strings, point particles, two-dimensional membranes, three-dimensional blobs and other multi-dimensional objects we can not perceive (Hawking and Mlodinow; 2010).  In fact, M-theory allows for many different internal spaces – as many as 10500 different universes, each one with their own particular set of laws of nature.  Is Cthulhu and its spawn from one of these universes?  Did this entity find a means of exuding itself into our universe, bringing with it R’lyeh, with some of its native laws of nature seeping into our universe?

Yes.  He actually cited Stephen Hawking in order to explain why R'lyeh is such a crazy-ass place.

He concludes with a teaser:

From a theoretical standpoint such inter-dimensional travel to other universes may be feasible but the limitation to this is the amount of energy needed to accomplish this.  While this is a huge obstacle to us, maybe Cthulhu and its spawn can harvest the energy from antimatter and travel to other universes – and one of those universes may be ours.  But such travel to other universes with different physical laws of nature may pose some limitations onto these inter-universal travelers.  It is these potential limitations on entities from outside of our space-time continuum we will be discussing in the next article.

So there may be a way to stop these monsters!  Hallelujah!  Alert Henry Armitage!  Wilbur Whateley is going down!

Ahem.  Yeah.  What's funniest about all of this is that Lovecraft himself was a staunch rationalist.  He used to reply to the fans who wrote to him, asking for directions to Dunwich or Innsmouth, "Those places do not exist.  I know that for certain.  You see, I made them up."  This didn't stop people from looking, of course, and it spawned (there's that word again) theories that he was covering up his knowledge to protect himself from retribution by the Abominable Mi-Go, or whatever.  (In fact, I riffed on that very idea in my short story "She Sells Seashells," which, should you choose to read it, I feel duty-bound to point out is fiction as well.)

And apparently there are people who are sold enough on his worldview that they'd like to use it to prove string theory.  Or vice-versa, I'm not sure.  Which is also kind of peculiar, because besides Lovecraft's fictional universe being a pretty bleak place, he was also a raving racist, a feature that pops out with cringeworthy regularity in his stories.  (So while I count him amongst the inspirations for my own writing, I can't really in good conscience read about half of what he wrote.)

Anyhow.  That's our excursion into the Deep Places for today, and I'm off to get some coffee and then to fight my way through the Insanely Gibbering Hordes that populate the Loathsome Monolith-Crowned Citadel where I shall Reside in Nuclear Chaos Until The End Of Time.

Respectively, "my dogs," "my office," and "fucking around on social media."

*************************************

Astronomer Michio Kaku has a new book out, and he's tackled a doozy of a topic.

One of the thorniest problems in physics over the last hundred years, one which has stymied some of the greatest minds humanity has ever produced, is the quest for finding a Grand Unified Theory.  There are four fundamental forces in nature that we know about; the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity.  The first three can now be modeled by a single set of equations -- called the electroweak theory -- but gravity has staunchly resisted incorporation.

The problem is, the other three forces can be explained by quantum effects, while gravity seems to have little to no effect on the realm of the very small -- and likewise, quantum effects have virtually no impact on the large scales where gravity rules.  Trying to combine the two results in self-contradictions and impossibilities, and even models that seem to eliminate some of the problems -- such as the highly-publicized string theory -- face their own sent of deep issues, such as generating so many possible solutions that an experimental test is practically impossible.

Kaku's new book, The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything describes the history and current status of this seemingly intractable problem, and does so with his characteristic flair and humor.  If you're interesting in finding out about the cutting edge of physic lies, in terms that an intelligent layperson can understand, you'll really enjoy Kaku's book -- and come away with a deeper appreciation for how weird the universe actually is.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Lovecraft, tentacles, and Area 51

I participate in a rather amusing motivational technique to keep me running regularly.  It's called "virtual racing" (the particular version of this I play is over at the site YesFit), and the idea is that you choose a location where you'd like to be running, then log your miles however you prefer -- running, walking, cycling, swimming, whatever -- and the site shows you where you are on a map, sends you pictures from Google StreetView, and every once in a while will give you a clickable link to find out more about the place you're "visiting."  Then, when you finish the race, you get a prize -- a medal or a t-shirt.

I know it's a little silly, but I love seeing my little place marker move across the map, and it's great fun to see pictures of where my avatar is.  Well, usually it is -- my most recent race was along the infamous Area 51 in Nevada, and to say the scenery is monotonous is like saying that the terrain around Mount Everest is "a little hilly."

Even so, I completed the race (a total of 97.7 miles), and yesterday, I got my reward t-shirt, with a silhouette of an alien saying, "Thanks For Believing In Me."  And in a nice little synchronicity, I had shortly after I opened the package, I found a link over at Mysterious Universe claiming that Google Earth caught photographs of the bombing range at Groom Lake (part of Area 51) showing bomb craters...

... with tentacles coming out of them.

The problem with Mysterious Universe is that I can never tell when they're kidding.  Some of their authors, notably Nick Redfern and Brent Swancer, seem like True Believers.  Others, like Paul Seaburn, tend to take a more skeptical view of things.  The jury's still out about the one who wrote the article about the tentacles, Sequoyah Kennedy, because he says that the tentacles are signs that the Lovecraftian Elder Gods are returning to Earth.

Without further ado, here's one of the photographs:

And here's a bit of what Kennedy has to say:

There’s a weird almost-symmetry to a lot of these “tentacles,” and it definitely has an organic sort of shape.  I wonder if it’s slightly differently programmed ballistics tests leaving char marks on the ground, or perhaps captured mid-flight, but I’m completely unqualified to make any judgments on that so I’m sticking with what I know—Elder Gods.

Which seems like a solid logical chain to me.  If you can rule out char marks from ballistic tests, any weird thing captured on Google Earth must be Great Cthulhu returning to subjugate humanity.

However, he does seem to realize that he's on shaky ground:

There appears to be a small hole with long eldritch tendrils reaching out of it, like tree roots or black mycelium.  It’s weird.  It could be absolutely anything, but it’s weird.

Which puts me in mind of the wonderful quote from Carl Sagan's Cosmos:

I can't see a thing on the surface of Venus.  Why not?  Because it's covered with a dense layer of clouds.  Well, what are clouds made of?  Water, of course.  Therefore, Venus must have an awful lot of water on it.  Therefore, the surface must be wet.  Well, if the surface is wet, it's probably a swamp.  If there's a swamp, there's ferns.  If there's ferns, maybe there's even dinosaurs. 

Observation: I can't see a thing.  Conclusion: dinosaurs.

Ironically, one of Lovecraft's best stories, "In the Walls of Eryx," is about an Earth man on Venus, slogging around in a swamp, while fighting -- you guessed it -- super-intelligent dinosaurs.

Myself, I doubt the tentacles in Area 51 have anything to do with Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Tsathoggua, and the rest of the gang.  Nor, as one of my friends suggested, does the sinkhole that opened up last week in front of the White House, despite the fact that casting Donald Trump in the role of an evil, depraved Elder God actually has some appeal.  (Maybe he'd be Yuck-Sothoth, or something.)

So chances are, this is another one of those things that has a completely ordinary explanation, even if (because it's Area 51, after all) we never find out what it is.  I'm certainly not going over there to find out; besides it being the most boring terrain in the world, there are signs all over the place saying "KEEP OUT: THE USE OF DEADLY FORCE IS AUTHORIZED," which is a little off-putting.  Now y'all will have to excuse me, because I'm going to go for a run.  I'm currently ten miles into the Yeti Trail in Nepal, and the t-shirt for this one is wicked cool.

************************

This week's recommended book is one that blew me away when I first read it, upon the urging of a student.  By groundbreaking neuroscientist David Eagleman, Incognito is a brilliant and often astonishing analysis of how our brains work.  In clear, lucid prose, Eagleman probes the innermost workings of our nervous systems -- and you'll learn not only how sophisticated it is, but how easy it can be to fool.

Quantum-thulhu

Because the universe has a peculiar sense of humor sometimes, my post considering the misapplication of the scientific term "dimension" was followed up nearly instantaneously by my stumbling upon an article called "The Dimenionality [sic] of Cthulhu."

Yes, Cthulhu, as in the octopoid monster-god in the mythos of H. P. Lovecraft.  The article was posted a couple of days ago on a blog entitled "Lovecraftian Science: Scientific Investigations Into the Cthulhu Mythos."  When I happened upon it, I thought at first that this was just an example of a scientist having a little bit of fun, much the way legitimate historians will play around with analysis of the timeline and backstory of The Lord of the Rings.  But upon reading the entire entry, and several other posts besides, at the cost of countless brain cells in my pre-frontal cortex which cried out piteously as they dissolved into the amorphous, bubbling nether-slime of the darkest eldritch reaches of time and space, I have come to the conclusion that this dude is actually serious.

[image courtesy of artist Dominique Signoret and the Wikimedia Commons]

Consider, for example, the following passage:

Based on... references made by HPL, Cthulhu and its spawn are not from our space-time continuum. This explains how these entities can function beyond the confines of our physical laws, such as its fluid movement and apparent plasma-like structure. Indeed, further study of Cthulhu and its spawn may provide the evidence needed to support the M-theory.

Yes, M-theory, that impossibly abstruse mathematical construct that attempts to unify all consistent string theoretical models of quantum gravity.  The introduction to the Wikipedia article on the topic, which despite my bachelor's degree in physics represents the limit of my understanding of the subject, says the following:

Investigations of the mathematical structure of M-theory have spawned a number of important theoretical results in physics and mathematics. More speculatively, M-theory may provide a framework for developing a unified theory of all of the fundamental forces of nature.

"Spawned."  Sounds like a Cthulhu reference already.  So there you are, then.

The author of the article apparently agrees.  He goes on to say:

M-theory describes a reality of vibrating strings, point particles, two-dimensional membranes, three-dimensional blobs and other multi-dimensional objects we can not perceive (Hawking and Mlodinow; 2010).  In fact, M-theory allows for many different internal spaces – as many as 10500 different universes, each one with their own particular set of laws of nature. Is Cthulhu and its spawn from one of these universes?  Did this entity find a means of exuding itself into our universe, bringing with it R’lyeh, with some of its native laws of nature seeping into our universe?

Yes.  He actually cited Stephen Hawking in order to explain why R'lyeh is such a crazy-ass place.

He concludes with a teaser:

From a theoretical standpoint such inter-dimensional travel to other universes may be feasible but the limitation to this is the amount of energy needed to accomplish this.  While this is a huge obstacle to us, maybe Cthulhu and its spawn can harvest the energy from antimatter and travel to other universes – and one of those universes may be ours.  But such travel to other universes with different physical laws of nature may pose some limitations onto these inter-universal travelers.  It is these potential limitations on entities from outside of our space-time continuum we will be discussing in the next article.

So there may be a way to stop these monsters!  Hallelujah!  Alert Henry Armitage!  Wilbur Whateley is going down!

Ahem.  Yeah.  What's funniest about all of this is that Lovecraft himself was a staunch rationalist.  He used to reply to the fans who wrote to him, asking for directions to Dunwich or Innsmouth, "Those places do not exist.  I know that for certain.  You see, I made them up."  This didn't stop people from looking, of course, and it spawned (there's that word again) theories that he was covering up his knowledge to protect himself from retribution by the Abominable Mi-Go, or whatever.  (In fact, I riffed on that very idea in my short story "She Sells Seashells," which, should you choose to read it, I should point out is fiction as well.)

And apparently there are people who are sold enough on his worldview that they'd like to use it to prove string theory.  Or vice-versa, I'm not sure.  Which is also kind of peculiar, because besides Lovecraft's fictional universe being a pretty bleak place, he was also a raving racist, a feature that pops out with cringe-worthy regularity in his stories.  (So while I count him amongst the inspirations for my own writing, I can't really in good conscience read about half of what he wrote.)

Anyhow.  That's our excursion into the Deep Places for today, and I'm off to get some coffee and then to fight my way through the Insanely Gibbering Hordes that populate the Loathsome Monolith-Crowned Citadel where I shall reside in Nuclear Chaos Until The End Of Time.

Better known as my classroom.

Cheerleaders for Miskatonic University

New from the "Let's Review The Definition Of Fiction, Shall We?" department, apparently there are people who think that whole pantheon of gods dreamed up by H. P. Lovecraft is real.

Never mind that Lovecraft himself was a staunch materialist.  Never mind that he used to respond to nutcases in his own day who'd write to him, claiming to have visited the ruins of Dunwich and Innsmouth, with, "Those places don't exist.  I know that for certain.  You see, I made them up."  Never mind that if you go to your local high school's counseling office, and peruse the bookshelf for a college catalog for Miskatonic University, you will find it goes from "University of Minnesota" directly to "Mississippi State."

You'd think all of that would lead people to the conclusion that Elder Gods were figments of Lovecraft's fevered imagination.  You'd think that people would focus on the "myth" part of "Cthulhu mythos."

You'd be wrong.

There are apparently whole cults devoted to the worship of the Elder Gods, amongst whom Cthulhu seems to be the favorite.  Yog-Sothoth, who is inevitably described as "congeries of iridescent globes," is also popular, which raises a question:  what the hell is a "congery?"  I looked it up, and supposedly it means "collection, group, or assemblage."  I think you all need to make a point of using this word in a sentence today, such as, "look at that cute congery of puppies," or "that's a mighty nice congery of Star Wars action figures you got there, Bob."

Anyhow, the cultists faced a problem; being that the whole thing was made up, so were all the trappings -- especially the books and so on, such as "the cursed Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred."  Undaunted, they simply got into the spirit of things, and made that up, too.  A guy who is known only as "Simon" wrote (well, he claims he translated it) the version of the Necronomicon that currently is used by most of your better Cthulhu cults.  It's available on Amazon (no, I'm not kidding) and apparently sells quite well.

And, of course, if you're going to have cultists, you'll have people who preach against them.  Jack Chick, who is the leader of a nominally Christian fringe group and who seems to be a raving wackmobile, claims that (1) Cthulhu and all the other Elder Gods are real because he's seen them, and (2) they're all minions of Satan so you better be careful.  In fact, he published a series of graphic novels about how Satanism is undermining American society, and one of them specifically deals with Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, and the rest of the gang.  It's named, "Who Will Get Eaten First?"

You'd think that anyone who made these kind of claims would be guffawed at.  And I live in the hope that 99% of people are rational enough to have exactly that response.  But sadly, all you have to do is to Google "Cthulhu cults" and you'll have tens of thousands of hits.  So I wondered, what is it about these ideas that people are so attracted to?  While I like a lot of Lovecraft's stories, notwithstanding his tendency toward purple prose ("loathsome, amorphous, bubbling slime from the nethermost darkness of the eldritch depths of space and time!") and predictability (why does everyone in his stories live in a house with a "gambrel roof?"), I really would prefer it if his view of the universe was fiction.  What with earthquakes, leaking nuclear reactors, rebellions and uprisings, we have enough to worry about these days without there also being evil monsters lurking around trying to eat us for dinner.  Of course, the stories are also full of characters who are drawn in by the powers that said monsters allegedly grant their followers, and honestly, I can see how that might be a temptation.  If I could chant a magic formula in my classroom and make a misbehaving student or two melt, I think I might be willing to join the Esoteric Order of Dagon, too.

The downside, of course, is that being fiction, it isn't real, which is a distinction these people seem to have trouble with.  You'd think the first time they tried to summon up Nyarlathotep, and nothing happened, they'd basically sit back and say, "Well, I guess it's all fake.  What a bunch of goobers we are," and go back to their jobs and houses and so on.  But that never seems to happen with Believers, does it?  All you need is conviction, and a grim determination to hold on to your ideas in the face of contrary evidence, and you're set for life.